Chapter I

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[186] “Thus the ultimate origin of exogamy and with it the law of incest--since exogamy was devised to prevent incest--remains a problem nearly as dark as ever.”--_Totemism and Exogamy_, I, p. 165.

[187] _The Origin of Man_, Vol. II, Chap. 20, pp. 603-4.

[188] _Primal Law_, London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, _Social Origins_).

[189] _Secret of the Totem_, pp. 114, 143.

[190] “If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of Mr. Darwin’s theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a _sacred_ sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical rule would be that of the jealous sire: ‘No males to touch the females in my camp,’ with expulsion of adolescent sons. _In efflux of time that rule, becoming habitual_, would be, ‘No marriages within the local group.’ Next let the local groups receive names such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, ‘No marriage within the local group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe.’ But, if the primal groups were not exogamous they would become so as soon as totemic myths and taboos were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other names of small local groups.”--‘_Secret of the Totem_’, p. 143. (The italics above are mine).--In his last expression on the subject (_Folklore_, December, 1911), Andrew Lang states, however, that he has given up the derivation of exogamy out of the “general totemic” taboo.

[A] M. Wulff, _Contributions to Infantile Sexuality_, _Zentralbl. f. Psychoanalyze_, 1912, II, No. I, p. 15.

[191] _Little Hans_, trans. by A. A. Brill (Moffat, Yard & Co., N.Y.).

[192] _l.c._, p. 41.

[193] ‘The Phantasy of the Giraffe,’ _l.c._, p. 30.

[194] S. Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psychoanalysis_, p. 204, translated by Ernest Jones (Badger, Boston, 1916).

[195] Compare the communications of Reitler, Ferenczi, Rank, and Eder about the substitution of blindness in the Oedipus myth for castration. _Intern. Zeitschrift f. ärtzl. Psychoanalyze_, 1913, I, No. 2.

[196] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 209.

[197] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 212.

[198] Frazer finds that the essence of totemism is in this identification: “Totemism is an identification of a man with his totem.” _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV, p. 5.

[199] I am indebted to Otto Rank for the report of a case of dog phobia in an intelligent young man whose explanation of how he acquired his ailment sounds remarkably like the totem theory of the Aruntas mentioned above. He had heard from his father that his mother at one time during her pregnancy had been frightened by a dog.

[200] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.

[201] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.

[202] “The inference is that the domestication to which totemism leads (when there are any animals capable of domestication) is fatal to totemism.” Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 1911, fifth edition, p. 120.

[203] _l.c._, p. 313.

[204] _The Golden Bough_, Part V; _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, 1912, in the chapters: “Eating the God and Killing the Divine Animal.”

[205] Frazer, _Totem and Exogamy_, Vol. II, p. 590.

[206] I am not ignorant of the objections to this theory of sacrifice as expressed by Marillier, Hubert, Mauss and others, but they have not essentially impaired the theories of Robertson Smith.

[207] _Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Edition, 1907, p. 412.

[208] For a recent contribution compare _The Whole House of the Chilkat_, by G. T. Emmons (_American Museum Journal_, Vol. XVI, No. 7.) [Translator].

[209] The reader will avoid the erroneous impression which this exposition may call forth by taking into consideration the concluding sentence of the subsequent chapter.

[210] The seemingly monstrous assumption that the tyrannical father was overcome and slain by a combination of the expelled sons has also been accepted by Atkinson as a direct result of the conditions of the Darwinian primal horde. “A youthful band of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single female captive. A horde as yet weak in their impubescence they are, but they would, when strength was gained with time, inevitably wrench by combined attacks, renewed again and again, both wife and life from the paternal tyrant” (_Primal Law_, pp. 220-1). Atkinson, who spent his life in New Caledonia and had unusual opportunities to study the natives, also refers to the fact that the conditions of the primal horde which Darwin assumes can easily be observed among herds of wild cattle and horses and regularly lead to the killing of the father animal. He then assumes further that a disintegration of the horde took place after the removal of the father through embittered fighting among the victorious sons, which thus precluded the origin of a new organization of society; “An ever recurring violent succession to the solitary paternal tyrant by sons, whose parricidal hands were so soon again clenched in fratricidal strife” (p. 228). Atkinson, who did not have the suggestions of psychoanalysis at his command and did not know the studies of Robertson Smith, finds a less violent transition from the primal horde to the next social stage in which many men live together in peaceful accord. He attributes it to maternal love that at first only the youngest sons and later others too remain in the horde, who in return for this toleration acknowledge the sexual prerogative of the father by the restraint which they practise towards the mother and towards their sisters.

So much for the very remarkable theory of Atkinson, its essential correspondence with the theory here expounded, and its point of departure which makes it necessary to relinquish so much else.

I must ascribe the indefiniteness, the disregard of time interval, and the crowding of the material in the above exposition to a restraint which the nature of the subject demands. It would be just as meaningless to strive for exactness in this material as it would be unfair to demand certainty here.

[211] This new emotional attitude must also have been responsible for the fact that the deed could not bring full satisfaction to any of the perpetrators. In a certain sense it had been in vain. For none of the sons could carry out his original wish of taking the place of the father. But failure is, as we know, much more favourable to moral reaction than success.

[212] “Murder and incest, or offences of like kind against the sacred law of blood are in primitive society the only crimes of which the community as such takes cognizance ...” _Religion of the Semites_, p. 419.

[213] Compare _Transformations and Symbols of the Libido_, by C. G. Jung, in which some dissenting points of view are represented.

[214] Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, 1907.

[215] See above, p. 128.

[216] “To us moderns, for whom the breach which divides the human and divine has deepened into an impassable gulf, such mimicry may appear impious, but it was otherwise with the ancients. To their thinking gods and men were akin, for many families traced their descent from a divinity, and the deification of a man probably seemed as little extraordinary to them as the canonization of a saint seems to a modern Catholic.” Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, I; _The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, II, p. 177.

[217] It is known that the overcoming of one generation of gods by another in mythology represents the historical process of the substitution of one religious system by another, either as the result of conquest by a strange race or by means of a psychological development. In the latter case the myth approaches the “functional phenomena” in H. Silberer’s sense. That the god who kills the animal is a symbol of the libido, as asserted by C. G. Jung (_l.c._), presupposes a different conception of the libido from that hitherto held, and at any rate seems to me questionable.

[218] _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 412-413. “The mourning is not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine tragedy, but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural anger. And a chief object of the mourners is _to disclaim responsibility for the god’s death_--a point which has already come before us in connexion with theanthropic sacrifices, such as the ‘ox-murder at Athens.’”

[219] The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle in disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful neurotics. In Ferenczi’s excellent study we have seen how the boy recognized his totem in the animal which snaps at his little penis. When children learn about ritual circumcision they identify it with castration. To my knowledge the parallel in the psychology of races to this attitude of our children has not yet been drawn. The circumcision which was so frequent in primordial times among primitive races belongs to the period of initiation in which its meaning is to be found; it has only secondarily been relegated to an earlier time of life. It is very interesting that among primitive men circumcision is combined with or replaced by the cutting off of the hair and the drawing of teeth, and that our children, who cannot know anything about this, really treat these two operations as equivalents to castration when they display their fear of them.

[220] Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions_, II, p. 75.

[221] “Une sorte de péché proethnique,” _l.c._, p. 76.

[222] The suicidal impulses of our neurotics regularly prove to be self-punishments for death wishes directed against others.

[223] _Eating the God_, p. 51.... Nobody familiar with the literature on this subject will assume that the tracing back of the Christian communion to the totem feast is an idea of the author of this book.

[224] Ariel in _The Tempest_:

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange....

[225] La Mort d’Orphée, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions_, Vol. II, p. 100.

[226] That is to say, the parent complex.

[227] I am used to being misunderstood and therefore do not think it superfluous to state clearly that in giving these deductions I am by no means oblivious of the complex nature of the phenomena which give rise to them; the only claim made is that a new factor has been added to the already known or still unrecognized origins of religion, morality, and society, which was furnished through psychoanalytic experience. The synthesis of the whole explanation must be left to another. But it is in the nature of this new contribution that it could play none other than the central rôle in such a synthesis, although it will be necessary to overcome great affective resistances before such importance will be conceded to it.

[228] Compare Chapter II .

[229] See